


the savage price of piety

by Mici (noharlembeat)



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Angst, Backstory, Gen, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Spoilers for The Raven King
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-11
Updated: 2016-07-11
Packaged: 2018-07-22 20:49:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7453483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noharlembeat/pseuds/Mici
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are secrets that the Lynches keep, and Declan might be the best-kept one of them all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the savage price of piety

**Author's Note:**

> One day I will write a Pynch fic that I set out to write. Today is not that day. Title is from the song Poor Isaac by the Airborne Toxic Event.

He takes Matthew to church in Henrietta every Sunday because he tried to take Matthew to church in D.C. but he was lackluster, uncertain, and the priest didn’t know what to do with him, and at any rate, he misses Ronan. 

Matthew sleeps and Ronan shifts uncomfortably in the pews. Declan doesn’t think about how they’re all sitting quiet as the mass goes on around them, he doesn’t think about how this is what’s left of his family. He thinks about how he’s not entirely certain that God is real, about how he hates sitting in church, about how much he’s grateful his little brothers are here, about how much he wants to leave Matthew for a few days so that he can sleep with his girlfriend without worrying that Matthew might hear them. 

He counts the seconds between the minutes and asks God to explain how to feel settled and untroubled. God is silent. He asks God to make Matthew feel safe and Ronan feel loved, instead. It seems a better use of his prayers, to ask God for things that are certain and cemented. His own worries have never been anything but a chore.

~~~~

Declan is fourteen the first time that his father takes him to New York City alone. They had been as a family before, there are pictures of the three Lynch boys sitting in Central Park, of Ellis Island, of the Statue of Liberty. Matthew had gotten lost for twenty minutes and they found him sitting with a police officer, crying, and their mother had cried too, the same wailing sort of tears, until they plied Matthew with ice cream and he smiled again, episode forgotten.

This time it’s different. Declan is fourteen. Declan knows where the money comes from now, Declan is part of it, his father’s right hand.

(This is funny, Declan thinks, because his father is left-handed.)

He takes him to a bar which is more like a pub and they let Declan in on virtue of being Niall Lynch’s son. Niall is shadily involved with something that Declan doesn’t understand but it gives him enough clout to be able to sit his fourteen year old at a table with three other Irish men, all older, as they drink beer and talk about Belfast and Dublin and the lines that divide the two. They give Declan a beer because this is rarefied air, Irish air in an American city, and he’s an Irish boy with an American accent. He drinks and is soothed by the tones of their lilting accents, the music around them.

It’s the first time that Declan thinks that his father is pleased with him since Ronan was born, and he doesn’t remember when Ronan was born. Inside this bar, with these men speaking about politics and music and spinning Irish folktales for the grossly underage boy who is getting rapidly tipsy at the table, tucked next to his father, he’s Niall Lynch’s oldest son, his favorite for a brief shining moment. For a moment it doesn’t matter that Declan isn’t magic and never will be, because for these men magic is a fairy tale and a distant reality, unaware that it’s touching them with Niall’s laugh and Niall’s money, picking up round after round.

Late, later, he sees his father write a check and pass it to the man at the bar, and they leave.

Later still, when he’s sober and steady, he sits up in the hotel room and tries to breathe as his father sleeps, and wakes up with a pair of earrings, ravenously green, dangling from his fingers. “Lets the wearer turn invisible,” he says, rubbing his eyes. Declan wonders if they work, but it’s not like he can try them on. 

And later still, a dusky hour between sunset and sunrise, an hour later than a witching one, a time appropriate for magic, Declan trots to a townhouse, earrings in hand, and is handed an envelope by a dour looking woman who opens the door in a nightrobe. “You look just like him,” she hisses, displeased. 

Declan sees the displeasure in her and files it away. It won’t be the last time he sees it, but it’s the first time he realizes that what he is is a way for people to buy from Niall without hurting him, but without forgetting who they’re buying from.

~~~~~

“I have to talk to you,” Ronan says, looking uncharacteristically ashamed. It isn’t a good look on him, if Declan is honest. They are not men designed for looking ashamed; they are men designed for other things. Ronan is best served by his rage; every bit about him is chiseled out of a stone made for war. He would not look entirely out of place in the Ulster Cycle, one of the men tossed against the anvil of Cuchulain. No wonder Adam Parrish was attracted to him at the height of Ronan’s anger; anyone would be pressed to deny that fury.

Shame sits on him like a badly fitting suit, in comparison. Even in the walls of St. Agnes, as they wait for Matthew to finish his litany of sins (Matthew confesses like no other person Declan knows, the priest has had to talk to him about how _not everything you think is a sin is a sin you confess_ and it hasn’t made any difference), Ronan doesn’t wear shame well.

Declan just dips his head, turns it slightly. He’s listening, of course he’s listening. The secret to being Declan is in just how well he does it without anyone noticing. This time, though, he makes it obvious.

Ronan shifts, uncomfortable. “It’s about mom.”

Mom.

Declan isn’t stupid: he knows that Ronan moved their mother. He doesn’t know where. He thinks, if she’s lucky, that he’s found a way to tuck her back into the dream their father pulled her out of, to send her home to whatever nebulous form their dreams are crafted from. His heart tugs at that, stirring at the thought of it. But it would be a kind thing, if that’s the only future his mother could have. But the truth is that he thinks Ronan must have gotten Gansey, put her in a home, safe, where he could hold her apart from Declan.

He thinks, innocently, this is the part where Ronan admits where she is, and Declan can know even if he can’t visit, unable to look at her sleeping there. He can’t watch her like that, it hurts too much.

This is, possibly, the last innocent thought he has left. Declan is a creature built of suspicions, crafted by his father’s hand.

Ronan is shaking, then. Whatever people think of Ronan - he’s a thug, he’s a menace, he’s poison, a snake whose bite is furious and fast and unthinking - all of that is dismantled in this fear that Declan is almost sure that he’s never seen. There are words in Ronan that he can’t produce. The syllables that cannot form past his shaking.

So Declan sits, patiently, and that last innocence is beginning to slide away, until Ronan speaks again and it shatters. He doesn’t ask Ronan to repeat himself because he heard him the first time, and the cruelty that would be involved in the words coming out of Ronan’s mouth again would destroy them both.

There are an infinite measure of words that lay in an amorphous cloud between them. Declan could choose any of them, but he can’t. He can’t do this. He stands up and he walks away. 

~~~~~

When Declan was seven he wondered, to himself, if he was actually his mother’s son. He thinks this is a perfectly logical conclusion to come to: Matthew is boring and normal because Ronan dreamed him that way, but Ronan is magical and wonderful because he is the child of a dreamer and a dream. That’s why Declan doesn’t have any magic, why Declan is sturdy and practical and real. That’s why he’s no one’s favorite - how could he compete against the magic of his younger brothers?

This curiosity, this uncertainty, continues until he’s eight, and he wins a spelling bee but it falls to the wayside because that same night Ronan dreams a flaming sword and Declan pulls him out of the fire. Their father puts out the flame and makes sure that Ronan is okay, while their mother goes to check and see if Matthew woke up, and Declan goes back to his own bed, alone. No one checks on him until they’ve assured themselves of the status of their respective babies, and then it’s Aurora, coming in, her hand on his head.

“You don’t have to,” Declan says in a voice that is sharper than he knew he could manage.

“You’re mine too,” she states back, and presses a kiss to the top of his head, against his curls. “Thank you for saving Ronan,” she tells him.

He’s quiet for a long time, and she doesn’t go away, patient. “Are you really my mom?” he asks, finally. “Because you don’t have lie. If you’re not.”

She looks alarmed. “Why would you ask me that?” she asks, brushing her thumbs against his temples.

He feels his voice waver. He’s not supposed to cry. He’s not a baby. “Because I’m not magical like Ronan. Because I don’t look like you even a little. I can’t do magical things and because-” _because I’m not the first person everyone thinks about_ , he doesn’t say.

She tugs him up into her lap. “On the day you were born,” she says, and he can feel the hot pinpricks of tears against his eyes. This is Ronan’s story, this is Ronan’s magic, _the Henrietta ravens laughed and flowers burst into bloom_ , but she doesn’t stop, “it was the coldest it had been. Your father was gone on a trip and we had just moved here, so I didn’t know anyone,” she says, and her hand is on his head, “and there was a snowstorm. The power wasn’t good but I got up and drove to the hospital, but you didn’t want to wait. I got right to the hospital when you came, right in the car. The nurse caught you there, between the steering wheel and the brake pedal.” He knows he’s crying, then. “You were so good, even then. You barely ever cried.”

He’s tucked in her arms like he’s her baby, like he’s the only one she has. Once upon a time, that was true. “Oh, Declan,” she says, and he can feel something damp and hot against his forehead. “I’m sorry for what we do to you.”

~~~~~

Ronan is normally so good at letting whatever is between them rot, but today he’s chasing it. “I’m sorry,” he tries, and the words are strange coming from him. They weren’t always. Once when Ronan apologized it was careless, wayward, an absent thing like other words. Now Ronan hoards those words so they mean things. Now Ronan hoards his words because he thinks of them as truth. 

Declan doesn’t want to hear it. He doesn’t want to think that Ronan really is sorry, when he can’t breathe, when he feels like his heart is going to dissolve and escape his body through his fingertips. He can’t think. He can’t feel anything except a pulsing in his head; he turns into a bush and almost dry heaves but instead stands there and stares at the roses. St. Agnes is a simple church - it’s wood and stone and nothing else, the parking lot has been the setting of brotherly fights and church carnivals and it’s where every week his mother would put his rosary into his pocket until the week that she didn’t. She helped plant those roses, on some sunny spring day, as part of a church ladies group. She had made Ronan and Declan dig the holes, and Matthew helped put the dirt back.

He thought he had finished mourning her.

“I’m sorry,” Ronan tries again, and Declan is holding his head in his hands and he’s crying. He cried when their father died, but nowhere Ronan could see. He cried when their mother fell asleep, but nowhere Ronan could see. He cried when Matthew was spewing black ooze on the floor of his condo, vomiting and gushing poisonous vile ichor, but nowhere that Ronan could see.

But he’s crying now, and Ronan is watching, and he feels powerless, helpless, alone. Maybe he wasn’t her favorite but he was her first, her first baby, the first thing that kept her tethered to reality. Maybe he wasn’t her favorite, but he was hers. She was his.

~~~~~

“When are you going to leave your dad’s side, boy,” was not a question that Declan really was ready to answer. Liam was a broad man, swaggering, tall. Irish to the core of him, he was also involved in something as shady as Niall but without the magical trimmings. He was the kind of Irish that Niall liked and Niall loathed. 

He was a successful musician.

He played the flute better than anyone, better than Ronan, who was gifted in all the ways that Niall was and wished himself to be; he had a contract doing just that. But his fiddle player got into a fistfight ten minutes before the set, and Niall announced that _Declan played the fiddle_ and so Declan was pushed on the stage. This isn’t what they were in Boston to do. They were in Boston to meet with Greenmantle’s buyer and so that his father could thumb his nose at Greenmantle about the Greywaren ( _tu_ Declan hears in his dreams, _tu es Greywaren_ , and he knows it’s Ronan in the dead center of himself, and he dislikes his father’s stupid game) and sell him some stupid dream trinket, some impossible toy of infinite value. 

But here they were, with Declan on the fiddle, sweating his way through reel after reel, and finally enjoying it, singing along when songs were about the words and playing a vibrant, furious music that bared open his soul. Niall was a musician in the same way he was a dreamer - good at it by virtue and practiced by trade, the disguise in the Irish community of his true intentions. 

But Declan was his shadow in everything except for this; Declan’s fingers were more dexterous, his timing was more precise, his showmanship was more accommodating of another player. He was more generous with regards to his musical talent. He was better.

He was just better.

“Liam, what are you saying to my boy,” Niall laughs, his hand around Declan’s shoulders, possessive, demanding. 

Liam tips his drink Niall’s way. “I’m ready to steal him from under you,” he says, “he’s got all your swagger but twice the talent.”

Declan twists and sees his father laugh. They have the same smile, the same curls, the same look to them, like they know the shape of the world, and that shape is bent to their desires. And he knows that his father doesn’t think it’s possible. 

“Don’t laugh. Lynch, if you want it, a place on this tour is yours,” he says. “You’re on summer holiday, aren’t you? It’s a six week gig, paid, for all your shirt cost more than I’m offering, but it’s a good time.” 

Niall laughs harder, and pushes Declan. “Go on, it’s your decision, break your mother’s heart when I go home without you,” he laughs, and Declan knows he means it. It’s Declan’s decision. He thinks of his father, dreaming in a hotel room without him ( _he dreams in hundreds of hotel rooms without him, in the back of his car, in the dark of the woods, wherever he can find a place_ ) and he thinks of his mother and Matthew and Ronan, back home at the Barns. He thinks of his fingers on the fiddle, something he’s impossibly good at, the one thing he does better than his father, and Liam’s face, and the girls who he sees in the haze of those bars. 

It’s a flat fantasy, and he knows that his father is laughing because Declan’s loyalty is a deep and encumbering thing, tying him to the blood and the bone. It’s a Lynch loyalty, unwavering, persistent, the depth of which go to some rock in the heart of him. His father is laughing because his oldest son is the most boring thing he owns and he’s also the thing that he knows he designed without the capacity for betrayal.

~~~~

The punch is immediate, and the way that Declan knows how sorry Ronan is comes in the shape of Ronan’s future black eye and his venomous snarl, a warning, and in the way that he falls back and covers his face, too, and doesn’t punch back.

~~~~

Declan is used to not sleeping.

Three days after his father died, three days after Ronan broke, he’s with his mother when she sways suddenly and looks at Declan. “Where’s my Matthew,” she asks, before she collapses. Declan catches her, neatly, and she’s asleep, unmoving.

Ronan starts a fight when Declan calls the home nurse company, he starts a fight when Declan doesn’t fight the will, he starts a fight when Declan doesn’t even let Matthew go back to the Barns for his stuffed bear, and Declan doesn’t fight back until Ronan accuses him of being glad that dad is dead and mom is in a catatonic state, but even then he pulls his punches, even if he doesn’t want to.

~~~~~

Declan supposes that seeing Ronan be tender is like seeing someone take a pig for a walk. It’s not that it’s altogether out of the question. People own pigs. People take pigs on walks. But it’s a moment of recognition (an animal and a leash) followed by a moment of utter and complete shock (a pig) followed by a discomfort low in the stomach. It’s something people _do_. But it doesn’t mean it’s something commonly seen, or commonly experienced, or entirely, well.

No, the metaphor falls apart, Declan supposes.

Ronan doesn’t know he’s there. Parrish is sitting cross-legged in front of him, and Ronan has his legs splayed over Parrish’s, his knees bent up, half in the other boy’s lap but mostly not. Parrish is clearly upset about something - what, Declan doesn’t know, but he files it away in the computer he has for a brain - and Ronan is so careful, his fingers right at the edge of Parrish’s hair at his temple.

The kiss is both a surprise and not; Declan knew they had eyes for each other, and he worried that Ronan would dream something that would hurt Parrish, but now he sees that worry wasn’t necessary. Ronan kisses with a lack of urgency, a measure of comfort. He kisses Adam Parrish on the mouth, his eyes closing carefully, and the kiss is returned as if it’s a refuge in a storm. There is a delicacy in Ronan’s touch, a softness in Ronan’s mouth, a sweetness in the shape of Ronan’s spine.

There is a memory in the form that Declan sees, and he misses the brother he had, when that tenderness was reserved for him and for Matthew, hoarded up and pressed into laughs and tugs and boyhood games. Of course, that Ronan had disappeared long before their father died. 

There is a tearing in Declan’s heart, a jealousy over the way they kiss, completely guileless, without pretense. They kiss like Declan’s parents used to in spirit, except their kiss is new and tender, a delicate thing. They kiss like Declan has never kissed anyone, because Declan does not like the idea of falling in love, when love has never been very kindly to him.

“Ronan,” he says. Ronan looks up, sharply, surprised, and his face turns red. Parrish looks embarrassed, like he didn’t expect them to be caught. He looks over at Ronan, at Ronan’s black eye, and gets up. “Parrish,” Declan says, amiably. He makes out with Ronan. He eases Ronan’s sharp edges, blunts his spears. He soothes Ronan’s grief in a way no one else could manage. He’s not Declan’s enemy. 

Parrish looks at Declan coolly. “You gonna fight with your fists again?” he asks, and Declan is suddenly reminded of Parrish’s ugly smear of a past. 

“I’m not here to fight at all,” Declan responds, and Parrish doesn’t believe him, he can tell. Declan is a masterful liar but Parrish is better. It’s a wonder Ronan puts up with it.

But he leaves just the same.

Then it’s only Ronan and Declan, standing there, vicious mirrors. There are worlds and war in the Lynch brothers. There is an entire history between them that Declan suspects could rewrite the saga of the world. Once there were two brothers, and one killed the other out of jealousy. 

“How’s your eye?” Declan asks, and Ronan shrugs, looks away. 

They stand there for an uncomfortable minute. “She was my mother, too,” Declan finally says, and he thinks it should spill bitterness and bile, but all that comes out are those words. Quiet. 

Ronan looks at Declan. “I thought you didn’t love her,” he says, “when you wrote her off.” For someone who prides himself on telling the truth, it is the most honest thing that Ronan has said in two years. 

“That’s not fair,” Declan replies. 

Ronan is quiet. “She kept asking for you, you know,” he tells him. “She didn’t forget about you. I swear, man. I know I fucked up, but I swear, she just-” Ronan stops talking and he goes so quiet. “I couldn’t stand to look at you,” he manages, his voice thick. “I couldn’t stand to look at you because you’re not dad.”

Declan considers what that confession must have cost Ronan. He considers what that confession would have cost anyone, when Ronan is the warrior and Niall is the spear and Declan is the throwaway son who never features in any story. “Bro-” he starts. He doesn’t finish. 

They stand there for a long time. “I’m staying over on Saturday,” Declan says, finally. “I’ll bring Matthew. Okay?”

Ronan looks surprised. “Parrish is coming over,” he says.

“Whatever,” Declan responds. “Saturday. I don’t want to drive all the fucking way next week, it’s too fucking far.”

Ronan nods, finally. 

~~~~~

Declan’s dreams are fearsome things, and he thinks, at ten years old, how lucky he is, that he can’t bring anything out of them. At twelve he realizes he is protecting himself the only way he knows how; he’s a phenomenal liar, but after twelve, it’s never really to himself. 

He gets up from his bed and goes outside and counts the stars, the twirling parts of the universe, and wonders how far he has to go before he finds home.

**Author's Note:**

> This came out of the deep dissatisfaction I felt with how the book treated Aurora and Declan's relationship and how Declan never got to say goodbye to his mom in any satisfying way? Also my general displeasure at how unfair Declan's life is in general. I HAVE A DECLAN LYNCH PROBLEM. I'M NOT ASHAMED.


End file.
